Chapter 182 - The Sage I

1

Today, let’s talk about a mirror.

Last time, we discussed the world’s most famous ship, so the story I’m about to tell also concerns the most famous mirror.

The “magic mirror,” to be precise.

Yes, that beauty-care mirror from Snow White.

-Mirror, mirror. Who is the fairest in all the world?

-For the 3,714th time, my answer remains the same: no one is fairer than you, Your Majesty. Please stop asking.

In short, the magic mirror came equipped with a database, statistical resources, and AI capabilities sufficient to search every human being on Earth.

Humanity had already invented ChatGPT hundreds of years ago.

Yet instead of investing this formidable lost technology in domestic politics, the queen used it for ego searches. The history of politicians fooling around on their smartphones went back that far.

On reflection, though, it’s a remarkably wise fairy tale.

It offers the insight that even if you put the ultimate tool in someone’s hands, what they’ll end up obsessing over is “searching stuff.”

If the Brothers Grimm had lived to see modern social media, wouldn’t they have smugly congratulated themselves on their foresight? See? Told you so.

“Your Excellency Undertaker.”

“Hm? What is it?”

But even the Brothers Grimm couldn’t possibly have predicted this.

One day, Yu Jiwon came to me and said:

“I believe I may have discovered a new monster.”

“A new monster?”

“Yes. However, this one is a little unusual.”

This was my seventh run.

Back when the updates hadn’t progressed very far and Tenlegs still reigned as the Korean Peninsula’s final boss. Those were the early days, when even Old Man Scho had hopes and dreams.

Originally, I’d joined Dang Seorin and served as her Deputy Guild Leader, but starting with my seventh run, I embarked in earnest on the path to independence. Old Man Scho had talked me into going into business with him.

Like everyone who leaves a successful career at a major corporation for a startup, my life was getting a little tangled.

Even then, though, Yu Jiwon made sure to visit me once a week for a chat.

Like an investor convinced that a temporary wobble in Bitcoin was merely a minor correction, a consolidation at the bottom.

Her expressionless face always silently proclaimed, “Fact is, the regressor’s fundamentals are getting stronger.”

In fact, these frequent meetings led plenty of blind idiots to suspect Jiwon and I were dating.

Old Man Scho was a prime example.

Isn’t that astonishing? That old bastard genuinely contributed nothing useful to my life.

“How unusual are we talking?”

“Hmm. It is difficult to put into words. Ah, would you care to come see it for yourself after we eat?”

I went to see it.

To my surprise, the “new monster” was in Jiwon’s private room.

It stood amid an interior plastered with books on every side, with bookshelves as the only furniture.

I furrowed my brows.

“... A mirror?”

The anomaly’s true form was a full-length mirror.

“Yes. I happened upon it while walking down the street and brought it home. A mirror this clean and unblemished is rare these days.”

“Wait... Haven’t grown-ups always told us that mirrors abandoned by the roadside are bad luck, and that we should never even look at them, let alone bring them home?”

“I do not believe in such superstitions.”

So declared the wise investor who had sunk her entire fortune into Regressor Coin.

In my seventh run, I hadn’t yet uncovered the relationship between anomalies and spells, either. So I merely clicked my tongue and left it at that.

“So what’s wrong with it? Does it open a gateway to another world or something?”

“No. Watch.”

Jiwon stepped up to the mirror.

“Mirror, mirror.”

And, of all things, she whispered those words to it.

Just as I began to wonder whether she’d acquired another mental illness on top of psychopathy, something rather surprising happened.

$-Please die immediately.

“Huh?”

$-Please die immediately.

The mirror “answered.”

Jiwon turned to look at me as I stood there in surprise.

“Did you hear that?”

“Y-yeah. I heard it.”

“I tested it on our guild members as well as myself, and it gave everyone the same response.”

“To die immediately?”

“Yes. All thirty-six members of Three Thousand Worlds received the identical answer.”

“... That really is an ominous thing.”

“Is it?”

Jiwon was unperturbed.

Keeping an obviously cursed object in her own room—clearly, even the folds of her brain followed a different pattern from everyone else’s.

“In any case, it did not appear to be an ordinary mirror, so I sought your advice. Disposing of it carelessly might produce undesirable effects instead. Are you not an expert in this field, Your Excellency Undertaker?”

“Hmm.”

“How would you recommend dealing with this object?”

“... Why not put it back where you found it for now? Unless the mirror has legs, it can’t follow you around.”

“I see. A wise and decisive judgment, as expected.”

Three days later.

“Your Excellency. A minor problem has arisen.”

“... What is it this time?”

“As you know, I disposed of the mirror as you prescribed. I thought that settled the matter, but now the bathroom mirror has begun giving the same response.”

“What?”

In short, this was Jiwon’s account.

She really had thrown away the cursed mirror.

Then the bathroom mirror—the very first one she looked at after waking up that morning—had fallen under the same curse.

$-Please die immediately.

Apparently, the mirror repeated nothing but those same words.

Naturally, Jiwon removed that bathroom mirror and threw it away too.

The next day, she entered Dang Seorin’s office. She had something to report to her guild leader.

And when she glanced at the tabletop mirror on Seorin’s desk:

$-Please die immediately.

Only then did Jiwon realize.

This anomaly did not reside in any particular mirror.

Whatever mirror she looked at first that day would turn into the anomaly the moment she saw it.

“Wait... How the hell does that work?”

The seventh-run newbie regressor, still lacking experience in many ways, was bewildered.

“Why do mirrors go weird just because you look at them, Jiwon?”

“I do not understand that myself.”

“And it even talks. It’s not some magic mirror from a fairy tale—”

I shut my mouth. Jiwon’s appearance had just caught my eye.

More precisely, I’d suddenly become aware of her hair color all over again.

“...”

“Your Excellency? Why are you looking at me like that?”

$← The mirror talks.

← Her silver hair is white as freshly fallen snow.

← Her face is better-looking than that of any human I’ve seen in my entire life as a regressor.

← With a little exaggeration, calling her “the fairest person in the world” isn’t entirely out of the question. $

“Ah...”

I couldn’t help groaning.

My mind arrived at a conclusion in an instant.

“...?”

That’s right.

Yu Jiwon.

This psychopath was the Korean Peninsula’s very own Snow White.

2

The mirror had no eyes.

So it felt a little wrong to ask the anomaly that had mistaken Jiwon for someone associated with Snow White and latched onto her whether it was fucking blind. Saying that to something that genuinely had no eyes would be discriminatory, wouldn’t it?

I, the Undertaker, did not insult people so casually, except for Old Man Scho, Yu Jiwon, and Sim Aryeon.

$-Please die immediately.

“Hmm.”

$-Please die immediately.

“...”

Still, plenty of things about it seemed odd.

For starters, it was far too docile for an anomaly.

Neither in my seventh run nor my eighth did the “magic mirror” cause any particular trouble. It merely urged people to commit suicide in a passive, unpleasant way.

Of course, encouraging suicide wasn’t a good deed.

But wasn’t it considerably better than the other anomalies that actively tried to end human lives?

Which inevitably raised a question.

‘What on earth does this anomaly actually do?’

As far as I knew, Snow White’s “magic mirror” was an AI that helpfully answered people’s questions, not some suicide parrot like this.

“Mirror, mirror. What are you?”

$-Please die immediately.

“Mirror, mirror. If civilization were still intact, would Bitcoin have broken three hundred million won?”

$-Please die immediately.

“Mirror. You wanna fucking die?”

$-Please die immediately.

“...”

Unlike in the fairy tale, the magic mirror remained unwavering no matter what I asked. With talent like that, it should have become a politician’s spokesperson.

But if you asked whether it was simply a recorder repeating a predetermined answer, that wasn’t the case either.

“Eh? Embalmar. This thing speaks German too?”

Astonishingly, when Old Man Scho stood before it, the mirror recommended suicide in German.

And Korean and German weren’t the only languages it had learned. Later, I brought the magical girls along, and it answered them in fluent Japanese.

Hindi. Russian. Filipino. Arabic. French. Chinese. Portuguese. Vietnamese. Spanish. Swahili.

There wasn’t a language the mirror couldn’t speak. Just what you’d expect of the most capable AI in history.

‘In short, it can accurately identify who it’s dealing with. So why on earth doesn’t its response change depending on the person?’

Time passed.

The first clue to answering that question came a full several hundred years later, in my forty-first run.

“Jiwon. How have you been?”

“Very well. Thanks to your care, Your Excellency, my work at Three Thousand Worlds continues without difficulty.”

“The mirror’s still the same?”

“Yes. Since disposing of it only causes another mirror to become possessed, I have simply left it alone.”

I walked past the full-length mirror without giving it much thought. I hadn’t even looked straight at it; I’d merely glanced its way.

Right then:

$-From now on, please get infected with Udumbara immediately, then die.

I was about to keep walking as usual, but stopped short.

“Huh?”

“Hm?”

Jiwon’s voice and mine overlapped.

A moment later, our gazes met as well.

“Jiwon, just now...”

“Yes. I heard it too.”

To make sure, I stepped squarely in front of the mirror this time.

And then:

$-From now on, please get infected with Udumbara immediately, then die.

It had changed.

After repeating the same answer to everyone for hundreds upon hundreds of years, the mirror had suddenly produced a different response.

“Jiwon. Come over here and try it.”

“Understood.”

Jiwon traded places with me.

$-Please die immediately.

And out came the same old answer again.

Jiwon gave a small nod, her face expressionless.

“How peculiar. I will bring the others.”

Dozens of Three Thousand Worlds members came to test it, and even Dang Seorin joined them.

The results were identical. Every awakened and ordinary person except me heard the answer, “Please die immediately.”

The conclusion:

“It appears the mirror changes its answer only when addressing you, Your Excellency Undertaker.”

“...”

“I find it quite gratifying that this seems to prove once again that you alone are special in this world, Your Excellency. Incidentally, may I ask what Udumbara is?”

“Ah.”

Sharp readers may remember that my forty-first run was also the first time I defeated Udumbara.

Naturally, virtually no one besides the Saintess and me knew it existed.

I’d defeated it before it bloomed in earnest and spread the New Buddha virus.

“It’s a World Tree I defeated without anyone knowing. At first glance, getting infected seems to let you live forever, but once you pass a certain point, all the infected get digested into nutrients for the World Tree.”

“Hmm.”

“But awakened must never get infected. It makes their awakened abilities disappear.”

Jiwon tilted her head.

“Their awakened abilities disappear?”

“Right. If you got infected, Jiwon, you’d lose your [Minimap].”

“Then what would happen in the unlikely event that you were infected, Your Excellency Undertaker?”

“Well, obviously, I’d lose my various abilities. [Perfect Recall], [Continue], all of them.”

“...”

Jiwon touched her chin.

She rested its tip lightly on her index finger—a habit of hers when she was deep in thought.

A little later, her lips slowly parted.

“This will be an exceedingly disrespectful question, but...”

“You’re always disrespectful, so it’s fine.”

“If you were to become infected with Udumbara, Your Excellency Undertaker...”

“If I got infected?”

Jiwon said:

“Would that not erase even your [Regression] ability, allowing you to meet a true death, Your Excellency Undertaker?”